More mmo Stories

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Wheel

Today there is a far greater chance that ordinary folks can bring, say, the next MMO to market. What’s changed? The arrival of specialized Platform-as-a-Service. Lisa Petrucci of Joyent explains why it’s easier than ever to innovate. Read more »

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playbook_feature

Research in Motion finally unveiled its much-rumored BlackBerry tablet yesterday, and it looks a lot more impressive at first glance than the company’s most recent handset, the Palm Pre-like Torch. But is this a game-changing device, or will it stumble out of the starting gate? Read more »

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For 90 percent of my daily toil, OS X is the best platform for me. I use it during my day job, freelance writing, school, graphic design, and the usual goofing off everyone does. However, there is one glaring desire missing: I play Massively Multiplayer Online Games […] Read more »

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Investors poured $237 million into virtual world-related startups and payment systems last quarter alone, according to a report released today by industry trade show producer Engage Digital, signaling venture capitalists’ continued enthusiasm in the market. (Nearly $600 million in funding went into this sector for all […] Read more »

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When Google launched its O3D browser plug-in for displaying rich 3D graphics last month, I was dubious that the virtual world industry would eagerly embrace it as a platform for future MMOs. Most of the larger casual virtual worlds, like Habbo and Gaia Online, run on […] Read more »

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When it comes to MMOs, freemium worlds for kids are enormously popular and lucrative; for the most part, however, the major game publishers have done little to pursue this market. That changes this month with the launch of Free Realms, a colorful virtual world from Sony […] Read more »

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They say numbers don’t lie, and in recent months the number of people populating virtual world Second Life has started to rise again. Mark Kingdon, CEO of parent company Linden Lab, has been touting the return to steady user growth; to back up his claims, he […] Read more »

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While everyone in the game industry was following the latest news from GDC last week, I happened to notice an MMO milestone happening on Facebook: a casual virtual world called YoVille passed 5 million monthly active users. Launched in May of last year, YoVille’s user growth […] Read more »

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Today, the casual social MMO RocketOn is launching a beta partnership with six prominent youth-oriented consumer sites: Comedy.com, Hypster, Online Flash Games, Hotspot, Boosh Magazine and faceDub. Now, visitors will find RocketOn’s Flash-based virtual world overlaid on those sites, making it easy for users to create […] Read more »

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I’m a huge fan of Aurora Feint: The Beginning for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s just the right blend of nerdy and casual for a mobile platform, and I could spend either hours or just a few minutes with it, depending on my schedule. And […] Read more »

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Metaplace, the user-created, web-based virtual world from visionary game developer Raph Koster, is announcing $6.7 million in Series B funding from new investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Read more »

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The massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) business is a lucrative one, as consumers typically first pay for the game, then are charged a monthly fee of $10-$15 to keep playing it. At least that’s the case for huge productions like industry leader World of Warcraft, and […] Read more »

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Real-world games have been tried before, but population density has always been one of their biggest challenges. The gaming might be good in Shattrath, but go to Times Square and you’re alone. Could World of Warcraft’s loyal followers help it make the first big real-world MMO? Continue Reading Read more »

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Call it Habbo Hotel meets Web 2.0. A free, web-based, casual virtual world with 2.5D graphics aimed at teens 13 and up, SmallWorlds, whose public beta launches today, at first looks like a more graphically rich version of the phenomenally successful (if aging) Finnish MMO. Like […] Read more »